By degrees
Ida's slight but perceptible hardness of manner wore away, and she
stood out what she was, one of the sweetest and most natural women in
England, and with it all, a woman having brains and force of
character.
Soon Harold discovered that her life had been anything but an easy
one. The constant anxiety about money and her father's affairs had
worn her down and hardened her till, as she said, she began to feel as
though she had no heart left. Then too he heard all her trouble about
her dead and only brother James, how dearly she had loved him, and
what a sore trouble he had been with his extravagant ways and his
continual demands for money, which had to be met somehow or other. At
last came the crushing blow of his death, and with it the certainty of
the extinction of the male line of the de la Molles, and she said that
for a while she had believed her father would never hold up his head
again. But his vitality was equal to the shock, and after a time the
debts began to come in, which although he was not legally bound to do
so, her father would insist upon meeting to the last farthing for the
honour of the family and out of respect for his son's memory. This
increased their money troubles, which had gone on and on, always
getting worse as the agricultural depression deepened, till things had
reached their present position.
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